Mind Reading as Cultural Technique: A Retrospective Approach to the Imaginary of Digital Media

在超心理学中，通过超感官感知获得他人思想信息的能力被称为读心术。然而，自从这个词在19世纪下半叶被引入以来，它也被用在了非常不同的语境中。特别是，读心术已经成为一系列技术和策略的代名词，这些技术和策略通过对生理指标、背景信息和先前行为记录的阐述来推断受试者的心理状态。在计算机科学领域，能够理解人类情绪和精神状态并对其做出反应的技术通常被称为“读心术计算机”。同样，算法允许预测用户和消费者的行为，并为他们提供量身定制的优惠和服务，例如b谷歌广告或亚马逊的“预期运输”，也被同化为读心术。为什么读心术的概念会与这些不同的现象和观点联系在一起？我们如何解释这种技术与神秘之间的复杂纠缠？读心术作为一种文化技术是如何影响数字媒体技术的发展的？该项目采用基于档案的历史方法，通过调查科学、神秘和数字技术之间的交集来解决这些问题。它调查了数字媒体技术和读心术之间的联系，从大约1880年开始，读心术的概念在超心理学领域被概念化，到控制论和人工智能在20世纪40年代至50年代的发展，当时克劳德·香农等研究人员开始将计算机程序呈现为“读心术机器”。通过将读心术作为一种文化技术，在计算机科学和数字媒体的某些技术和实践在这些环境中建立之前，该项目将为“新”数字媒体的谱系提供强有力的贡献。特别强调的是数字媒体和想象力之间的关系的研究，以及神秘理论和知识在现代和当代社会的影响。拟议的研究将采用强烈的跨学科方法，解决诸如媒体研究、计算机科学、科学史和文化史等领域交叉的问题。

In parapsychology, the ability to gain information about others' thoughts through extrasensory perception is called mind reading. Since this term was introduced in the second half of the nineteenth century, however, it has been employed in very different contexts, too. In particular, mind reading has become synonymous with a body of technologies and strategies that produce inferences about a subject's mental state through the elaboration of physiological indexes, background information, and records of previous behaviors. In the field of computer science, technologies programmed to understand and react to people's emotions and mental states are often described as "mind reading computers." Likewise, algorithms that allow to anticipate the behavior of users and consumers and provide them with tailored offers and services-for instance, in Google ads or in Amazon's "anticipatory shipping"-have also been assimilated to mind reading.Why is the concept of mind reading associated to such different phenomena and perspectives? How can we explain this complex intertwining between technology and the occult? How did mind reading as a cultural technique influence the development of digital media technologies? Employing archival-based historical methods, this project addresses these questions by investigating the intersection between science, the occult, and digital technologies. It investigates the association between digital media technologies and the imaginary of mind reading from circa 1880, when the concept of mind reading was conceptualized in the field of parapsychology, to the development of cybernetics and Artifical Intelligence in the 1940s-50s, when researchers such as Claude Shannon started to present computer programs as "mind reading machines."By addressing mind reading as a cultural technique, which anticipated certain technologies and practices from computer science and digital media long before they were established in these contexts, the project will provide a strong contribution to the genealogy of "new" digital media. Particular emphasis will be given to the study of the relationship between digital media and the imagination, as well as of the impact of occult theories and knowledge in modern and contemporary societies. The proposed research will employ a strongly interdisciplinary approach, addressing issues that are at the intersection of fields such as media studies, computer science, history of science, and cultural history.